


Unintended

by l_cloudy



Series: Flames on your skin [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Gen, Pre-Canon, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-26
Updated: 2014-02-26
Packaged: 2018-01-13 18:30:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1236655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/l_cloudy/pseuds/l_cloudy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Eddard Stark was four-and-ten when he woke up one morning, left hand throbbing, to find a name neatly inscribed along the underside of his thumb.</em>
</p><p>What good are soulmates in a world where there's no such thing as a love match?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Eddard Stark was four-and-ten when he woke up one morning, left hand throbbing, to find a name neatly inscribed along the underside of his thumb. The name of his _intended_ , black letters standing out against his red skin, burning like fire. Ned touched it, curious.  
He couldn’t feel a difference, wouldn’t have known that anything was different if not for the pain. 

If he closed his eyes, he could almost pretend it wasn't there.

Robert slapped him on the shoulder in enthusiasm when he heard that Ned had gone to the maester to ask for some bandages while he waited to get a got a glove properly fitted. “You’ll be a man in no time, Ned,” his friend said; and Ned refrained himself from pointing out that Robert had only had _his_ mark at fifteen, the year before.

“I’m not going to show you,” it was all he said instead; and Robert made a good job of looking suitably surprised, almost offended even, saying that he would never have expected Ned to. As if Ned didn’t know how common it was in the South for young men and women to share their names as some sort of friendship token, as repulsive as the idea was to him.

Names were meant to be private, Ned knew, a man’s furthermost secret, to be carried to the grave, but everything was different South of the Neck, where septas and septons bared their name-hands in a display of indifference for the ways of the flesh; where it was still custom to humiliate a fallen enemy cutting off the name-hand from the body and exposing it for all the world to see. Ned shivered at the thought.

“In only hope it’s a girl’s name, Ned,” Robert continued, “for your own good.”

Ned just looked at him. “I won’t tell you even if it was your brother’s,” he said, and Robert laughed.

“For his sake, I hope not,” he made a face. “Stannis would be distraught if such an _improper_ thing happened to him.”

Ned laughed along with him, even if he’d never met Stannis Baratheon. Robert’s tales of him were enough, and he could almost imagine Stannis being one of these people who believed that having another man’s name on your skin made you into a lover of men, like the Faith preached. “It’s not the name that makes you who you are,” Jon had told both him and Robert only a few turns ago, when he’d told them the story of how Ser Erryk and Ser Arryk were said to have each other’s names marked on their skin.

“No one knows what it means, Ned,” his foster father had said; and Ned had smiled and nodded, even though everyone knew that those few who married their intended were always blessed with a strong marriage. The best kind there is, Old Nan had said.

 _The best kind there is_ , Ned thought bitterly. As a child, he’d dreamed of it, to go travel the Seven Kingdoms for his intended, make her his wife; and now he knew it could never happen. Catelyn, the name said, and Ned already knew where she was, where she would be. Brandon’s, just like Lyanna, and Father’s attention, and Winterfell.

“You know,” he told Robert, flexing his thumb under the bandage. It didn’t quite hurt anymore. _Good_.

“I don’t think it matters, anyway.”


	2. Brother

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Robert and soulmates, and growing up. Drabble.

_Eddard_ , Robert’s wrist read, black and neat, the letters worded in such a precise hand, so unlike Robert’s own messy scrawl. _Eddard_ , and there was no doubt in Robert’s mind of just who his intended was, the best man he’d ever met; and yet he hated that mark all the same.

He hated it, because it should have been _Ned_ and not _Eddard_ , for the friend he’d made and the brother he’d always wanted, not the young, stiff northern child he’d met for the first time as a young lad. _Ned_ for the man that child had become, and yet his mark seemed to ignore all these years they’d spent together side by side; and Robert hated that most of all.

He hated the mark and hated himself more, until the day Jon had sat them down in his solar, him and Ned on a cold spring morning, and set them straight. “You’re growing up, lads,” Jon had said, “it’s about time we get all of that Faith nonsense out of your heads.” Robert had caught Ned snickering at that, shifting in his seat with an amused gleam in his eyes at the words _Faith nonsense_ , Ned Stark of his northern gods and name-hand still unmarred, Ned that was so much _younger_ than Robert had felt then.

Jon Arryn was a pious man, as a great lord should be. He believed in the Seven, old Jon, but less so in His Holiness and his septas and septons, and he’d taken great pleasure in disabusing his boys of the _silly, foolish notion_ , that the name on your hands was that of the person one should wed. Men had their wives’ names on their skin, Jon had said, but some others had their sons and daughters, brothers and fathers and childhood friends, and then it had been Robert’s turn to shift in his seat, uneasy, trying with all his might not to turn his head, and look at Ned, and _give it all away_ ….

And that night Robert had gone to bed feeling relieved, as if a weight had been lifted off his chest. The mark _didn’t_ make him a lover of men, whatever Stannis might say – and he’d known he wasn’t, of course, he’d known it all along but still it felt _good_ to have proof, and if _Jon_ said so…

But the morning after, when he woke up, he couldn’t help the stray thought – how everything would have been just so perfect, had Ned been born a woman.

Half a year later, Robert Baratheon met Lyanna Stark for the first time.

**Author's Note:**

> So, I'm [on tumblr](http://www.kyhlos.tumblr.com/) a lot lately. It's a thing.


End file.
